Energy Savings Options Open for Solar-Energy Customers

Forest Reach opens energy buybacks 
Delmarva Power and Harbeson-based renewable energy firm Flexera Inc. have established a legal way to enable Delaware homeowners and businesses to sell solar energy back to the PJM Mid-Atlantic power grid.
 
A solar panel system designed and built by Flexera Inc. for the Forest Reach community near Bethany Beach has just become the first small-scale solar power plant in Delaware to sell energy wholesale to the PJM grid.
 

The 15,000-watt system, which pays for running the 58-home Forest Reach community’s street lights, pool, pool house, irrigation and pond pumps, sets an important precedent, said Ben Farr, Flexera vice president.
 

“This opens the door for all kinds of commercial and residential applications that were not possible in Delaware until this project,” said Farr.
 

Unlike power companies in neighboring Pennsylvania, Delmarva Power was not set up to convey energy produced by customers’ renewable energy systems to the grid. In Pennsylvania and other states across the country, solar energy farms are being set up to sell energy to wholesale power buyers, who in turn sell this clean, renewable energy back to customers.
 

Farr, whose company designs and builds state-of-the-art clean energy systems and works through legal issues and grants for customers in four states, said that within five years the whole face of energy production will have changed in the United States, and projects like Forest Reach are the beginning.
 

“We will have small clean energy power plants selling to energy wholesalers throughout the country and making a major dent in fossil fuel consumption,” he said.
 

Negotiations between Delmarva Power and Flexera for the Forest Reach project began about a year ago after Forest Reach Homeowners Association President Mike Ball read about energy grants making solar installations affordable.
 

“We’re just Joe and Bob Homeowner here,” said Ball. “We didn’t know anything about how to go about this. Flexera worked the whole thing out - from permits, design and building to getting revenue-generating energy certificates and grants and finding a legal way to work with Delmarva Power to pay for the streetlights. Our hope is this success story gets more people to do it.”
 

The Forest Reach project is divided into two sections, one that meters energy to pay for the pool, pool house, irrigation and pond pumps, and another that pays for the community’s street lights.
 

The metered section earns energy credits against future bills from Delmarva Power.
 

The precedent setter is the street light system, which wholesales energy directly to the grid, generating funds, not credits, to cover Forest Reach’s streetlights lease. The system, in accordance with current Delaware law, produces within a few percentage points the same amount of energy dollars that the streetlights cost. Flexera’s engineers, legal team, grant managers, certificate brokers and geographical assessment specialists worked with Forest Reach, Delmarva Power and the state to devise a special Rate X system, creating a way, Farr said, for more communities and businesses to do this type of project.
 

Farr estimates the first section will pay for itself in approximately 3.5 years and the second section within about 5.5 years, making use of current federal and state grants, government-required buybacks of solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs) and by wholesaling to the PJM grid – all of which the design company handles for the customer. When the systems are paid for, they will generate funds through market trades of the SRECs.
 

“The real plus is there are no negative externalities - no Gulf oil leaks, no coal hauled across the country by diesel engines, none of the air problems associated with coal-burning power plants near our communities,” said Farr. “It is an advantageous time for people and businesses to set up renewable energy systems. Right now, before the grants phase out, there is a 20 to 30 percent return on investments, and you can’t get that kind of return in too many places.”